


Some Meta About Eve

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: What is driving Eve?
Comments: 15
Kudos: 14





	Some Meta About Eve

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write some meta about Eve and her motivations. It needed out of my head and writing this out helped.

After watching _Stranger Beside Me_ and _The Job_ I had some thoughts I needed to get out about Eve and Malcolm's relationship. I know they can't jump the storyline forward too much but really? We're THIS in love in two weeks?Yes, yes I know some people will swear love at first sights exists. I've personally known people who married within a week. Maybe it's more that I just don't get it and find it very uncomfortable in general.

Let's set that aside for a minute and really just look at this from the outside. Malcolm is _desperate_ to be loved and to be normal. He's grabbing at anything. I still maintain Malcolm is a borderline personality and they have plenty of high risk behaviors including sexual ones. 

As proof, let me back up several episodes. Malcolm says about two sentences to Eve the day he meets her at Milton Manor. He's put out a bit the next time he meets her when she shows up at his place out of the blue (and he hasn’t told her where he lives because he’s said all of three lines to her) to tell him his mother is drunk in the middle of the day and he realizes his mother gave his address to a stranger because _she’s_ desperate to set him up with a girlfriend. This conversation lasts what? Five minutes tops.

He runs into Eve down the road and asks her out on a weird date that ends up with him emotionally gutting her and she runs off leaving him in a bar. She comes back to him later that night and they have sex. Right there, that's high-risk behavior. You are basically having sex with someone you've known for what? 3-4 hours? I’m not putting that out there as a form of slut shaming but more as an indicator of high risk. Regardless of what we think of quickly falling into bed together (or the floor or whatever) it ends badly with the fact he nearly kills her.

She ghosts him for months (which okay I can understand that one). She presumably doesn't visit him in the hospital when he's been tortured. We don't even know if she's still in contact with Jessica, not until she calls Eve to represent her for stabbing Martin. The relationship doesn’t renew until Malcolm is regretful about how things ended with Eve and that she won’t talk to him. This prompts Jessica to call her and throws Malcolm under the bus, forcing the issue uncomfortably. At their reconciliation dinner you can _see_ Eve doesn't want to be there, not really, not until he tells her about the girl in the box.

And here is where it begins to fail for me. Not just because I think there's zero chemistry between them (there isn't, at least not for me. Your mileage may vary). It fails because of the implications. Later, once she's been discovered, Eve says something along the lines of "I didn't expect to have feelings for you."

Uh-uh not buying it. She approached Jessica initially because she believed Jess knew more than she ever said about Martin's victims. She is honest about that. She is in the Whitlys' lives solely because she wants to find her sister. I can understand that. She doesn't trust them, thinks they're covering for Martin so she wasn't honest as to why she’s there. She doesn’t present herself as someone searching for a victim, not for months even after Jess is out there begging for someone to come forward and you have to wonder why. By now she should have an idea if Jess was complicit in Martin’s crimes or not. She obviously recognizes the bracelet. She _knows_ that Martin is involved. As a viewer, you can't escape it. She is _sleeping_ with the son of the man she's almost certain has murdered her sister.

Who does that? That is beyond creepy. She comes across as a sociopath herself. She is flat out using Malcolm to learn more. She admits to that but then tries to cover it with I didn't expect to have feelings. Nope, sorry just no. All of us at one time or another probably have had feelings for someone we know we shouldn’t and most of us when faced with that, don’t act on those feelings because we know there will be ugly consequences. We understand people will get _hurt_. Eve could have accomplished what she wanted in terms of learning about her sister just as friends. She decided to get closer to him to manipulate him, to find out what she needs to. 

I can understand the desire to do that but Eve _has_ to know that this will break his heart. She even says it when she tries to stop him from looking at the picture. She says something like ‘We can't go back once you look at it’ which also rings false, There already IS no way back. Malcolm knows she's involved with him trying to find her sister. He has to confront the fact that her desire to learn what happened to Sophie is so strong, that maybe she wants to get revenge, that she was able to put aside the fact his father murdered her sister and still go to bed with him. That would give anyone the cold shivers.

Is he to kind to her at the end? Maybe but Malcolm _is_ kind to a fault. Eve has lost a part of herself but it has made her take drastic and cruel steps. She knows Malcolm wants to find out about the girl in the box himself, knows he has nightmares about it. She knows exactly what she's going to end up doing to him.

In fact, to me it was utterly creepy to have her sitting next to his bed as he sleeps. One, was she there all night and had she slept next to Malcolm (which would have to be a huge deal to him because he's never done that)? Did she let herself in and was just sitting there? (and Malcolm giving someone you've dated for two weeks your key to the house is still risky behavior, dude. Maybe you should take that strange artwork off the wall, it's eating your brain). She _knows_ he has nightmares and she knows it’s her sister he's having a nightmare about. He told her this prior to them renewing their sexual relationship. We know even before they start sleeping together again, she's nearly 100% sure her sister was the girl in the box because she _put_ herself in the trunk in Jess's basement (don't get me started on that. I still don’t understand why Jessica is keeping that trunk). She knows he has nightmares about her sister nearly daily and she is able to be there next to him while he fights that nightly battle inside his head. Eve is content to let him rip himself apart with these dreams rather than be honest and say I think it's my sister.

She knew this _before_ she started the relationship and Eve lets him suffer. She would have continued to let Malcolm's mind shred itself if Ainsley hadn't sniffed her out. So again, that's nudging up against sociopathic behavior as far as I'm concerned. Thoughts?

Of course I might be revising some of this based on what comes next but I needed this out of my head.


End file.
